PPARS consultants row - Consultants should not be the norm

It is rather akin to closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, but the new creed espoused by Tánaiste Mary Harney in relation to employing consultants is at least somewhat encouraging for the taxpayers.

In her role as Health Minister, she plans to make consultants the exception rather than the norm, as they have been up to now. It will become a matter of ministerial decision in her department as to whether a consultant is to be employed on a project or not.

In the aftermath of the disastrous PPARS affair and the FISP, and a plethora of others, involving tens of millions of taxpayers' money, the public may well be alarmed at her admission, or claim, that consultants were routinely employed without ministerial knowledge.